Blighted and accursed families are an inescapable feature of Greek tragedy, and many scholars have treated the questions of inherited guilt, curses, and divine causation. This book gives these ...
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Blighted and accursed families are an inescapable feature of Greek tragedy, and many scholars have treated the questions of inherited guilt, curses, and divine causation. This book gives these familiar issues a fresh appraisal, arguing that tragedy is a medium that fuses the conceptual with the provoking and exciting of emotion, neither of which can be ignored if the texts are to be fully understood. It pays particular attention to Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes and the Phoenician Women of Euripides, both of which dramatize the sorrows of the later generations of the House of Oedipus, but in very different, and perhaps complementary, ways. All Greek quotations are translated.Less

Guilt by Descent : Moral Inheritance and Decision Making in Greek Tragedy

N. J. Sewell-Rutter

Published in print: 2007-10-01

Blighted and accursed families are an inescapable feature of Greek tragedy, and many scholars have treated the questions of inherited guilt, curses, and divine causation. This book gives these familiar issues a fresh appraisal, arguing that tragedy is a medium that fuses the conceptual with the provoking and exciting of emotion, neither of which can be ignored if the texts are to be fully understood. It pays particular attention to Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes and the Phoenician Women of Euripides, both of which dramatize the sorrows of the later generations of the House of Oedipus, but in very different, and perhaps complementary, ways. All Greek quotations are translated.

Choral performance permeated Greek life on every level, from private weddings and funerals to large‐scale religious festivals, yet the relationship between these ritual choruses and the better known ...
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Choral performance permeated Greek life on every level, from private weddings and funerals to large‐scale religious festivals, yet the relationship between these ritual choruses and the better known choruses of tragedy has never been systematically examined. This book represents the first detailed study of the interaction between tragic and lyric choral song. It aims to enrich our understanding of the socio‐cultural position of both tragedy and lyric poetry, exploring the roles that these types of song played within the ritual life of the community. Thus through the connections between tragic and non‐tragic lyric, we not only gain insights into individual plays but also develop a broader understanding of the musical culture of the Greek polis. The first two chapters deal with methodological groundwork, exploring theoretical approaches to genre, and investigating lyric performance in fifth‐century Athens. The bulk of the book consists of detailed discussions of five lyric genres, with chapters on paian, epinikion, partheneia, hymenaios, and Thrēnos. Each chapter includes a discussion of the genre in question, an overview of its use in tragedy, and detailed case‐studies of two or three plays where the lyric references are particularly rich and complex. An appendix to the book contains a comprehensive list of generic interaction in Greek tragedy, with a brief guide to how these references can be identified.Less

The Hidden Chorus : Echoes of Genre in Tragic Lyric

L. A. Swift

Published in print: 2010-01-07

Choral performance permeated Greek life on every level, from private weddings and funerals to large‐scale religious festivals, yet the relationship between these ritual choruses and the better known choruses of tragedy has never been systematically examined. This book represents the first detailed study of the interaction between tragic and lyric choral song. It aims to enrich our understanding of the socio‐cultural position of both tragedy and lyric poetry, exploring the roles that these types of song played within the ritual life of the community. Thus through the connections between tragic and non‐tragic lyric, we not only gain insights into individual plays but also develop a broader understanding of the musical culture of the Greek polis. The first two chapters deal with methodological groundwork, exploring theoretical approaches to genre, and investigating lyric performance in fifth‐century Athens. The bulk of the book consists of detailed discussions of five lyric genres, with chapters on paian, epinikion, partheneia, hymenaios, and Thrēnos. Each chapter includes a discussion of the genre in question, an overview of its use in tragedy, and detailed case‐studies of two or three plays where the lyric references are particularly rich and complex. An appendix to the book contains a comprehensive list of generic interaction in Greek tragedy, with a brief guide to how these references can be identified.

This concluding chapter presents a synthesis of the discussions in the preceding chapters. It argues that issues of familial interaction, causation, human action, and moral responsibility in Attic ...
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This concluding chapter presents a synthesis of the discussions in the preceding chapters. It argues that issues of familial interaction, causation, human action, and moral responsibility in Attic tragedy are by no means settled; and that interpreters of these endlessly absorbing and undeniably intoxicating texts ignore them at their peril.Less

Conclusion

N. J. Sewell‐Rutter

Published in print: 2007-10-01

This concluding chapter presents a synthesis of the discussions in the preceding chapters. It argues that issues of familial interaction, causation, human action, and moral responsibility in Attic tragedy are by no means settled; and that interpreters of these endlessly absorbing and undeniably intoxicating texts ignore them at their peril.

Most people have some idea what Greeks and Romans coins looked like, but few know how complex Greek and Roman monetary systems eventually became. The contributors to this book are numismatists, ...
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Most people have some idea what Greeks and Romans coins looked like, but few know how complex Greek and Roman monetary systems eventually became. The contributors to this book are numismatists, ancient historians, and economists intent on investigating how these systems worked and how they both did and did not resemble a modern monetary system. Why did people first start using coins? How did Greeks and Romans make payments, large or small? What does money mean in Greek tragedy? Was the Roman Empire an integrated economic system? This volume can serve as an introduction to such questions, but it also offers the specialist the results of original research.Less

The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans

Published in print: 2008-02-14

Most people have some idea what Greeks and Romans coins looked like, but few know how complex Greek and Roman monetary systems eventually became. The contributors to this book are numismatists, ancient historians, and economists intent on investigating how these systems worked and how they both did and did not resemble a modern monetary system. Why did people first start using coins? How did Greeks and Romans make payments, large or small? What does money mean in Greek tragedy? Was the Roman Empire an integrated economic system? This volume can serve as an introduction to such questions, but it also offers the specialist the results of original research.

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the characteristics of a Greek tragedy. It then explains the purpose of the book, which is to shed new light on one of the central concerns ...
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This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the characteristics of a Greek tragedy. It then explains the purpose of the book, which is to shed new light on one of the central concerns of tragedy, and contribute to the understanding of the peculiar quiddity of this inescapably absorbing genre. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.Less

Introduction

N. J. Sewell‐Rutter

Published in print: 2007-10-01

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the characteristics of a Greek tragedy. It then explains the purpose of the book, which is to shed new light on one of the central concerns of tragedy, and contribute to the understanding of the peculiar quiddity of this inescapably absorbing genre. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.

This chapter demonstrates that there are two types of metre in the non-dactylo-epitrite poems, namely, aeolic and freer D/e. The former is similar with the aeolics of tragedy or comedy. The latter is ...
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This chapter demonstrates that there are two types of metre in the non-dactylo-epitrite poems, namely, aeolic and freer D/e. The former is similar with the aeolics of tragedy or comedy. The latter is similar with the normal D/e of Pindar.Less

Two Metres in Non‐Dactylo‐Epitrite Stanza‐Forms

Kiichiro Itsumi

Published in print: 2009-01-01

This chapter demonstrates that there are two types of metre in the non-dactylo-epitrite poems, namely, aeolic and freer D/e. The former is similar with the aeolics of tragedy or comedy. The latter is similar with the normal D/e of Pindar.

This book brings together two lines of enquiry in recent criticism: the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, and women as writers and readers in the 19th century. A classical education has been ...
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This book brings together two lines of enquiry in recent criticism: the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, and women as writers and readers in the 19th century. A classical education has been characterized as almost an exclusively male prerogative, but women writers had a greater imaginative engagement with classical literature than has previously been acknowledged. To offer a more accurate impression of the influence of the classics in Victorian women's literary culture, women's difficulties in gaining access to classical learning are explored through biographical and fictional representations of the development of women's education from solitary study at home to compulsory classics at university. The restrictions which applied to women's classical learning liberated them from the repressive and sometimes alienating effects of a traditional classical education, enabling women writers to produce distinctive literary responses to the classical tradition. Women readers focused on image, plot, and character rather than grammar, leading to imaginative and often subversive reworkings of classical texts. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot have been granted an exceptional status as 19th-century female classicists. This book places them in a literary tradition in which revising classical narratives in forms such as the novel and the dramatic monologue offered women the opportunity to express controversial ideas. The reworking of classical texts serves a variety of purposes: to validate women's claims to authorship, to demand access to education, to highlight feminist issues through the heroines of ancient tragedy, and to repudiate the warrior ethos of ancient epic.Less

Victorian Women Writers and the Classics : The Feminine of Homer

Isobel Hurst

Published in print: 2006-09-14

This book brings together two lines of enquiry in recent criticism: the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, and women as writers and readers in the 19th century. A classical education has been characterized as almost an exclusively male prerogative, but women writers had a greater imaginative engagement with classical literature than has previously been acknowledged. To offer a more accurate impression of the influence of the classics in Victorian women's literary culture, women's difficulties in gaining access to classical learning are explored through biographical and fictional representations of the development of women's education from solitary study at home to compulsory classics at university. The restrictions which applied to women's classical learning liberated them from the repressive and sometimes alienating effects of a traditional classical education, enabling women writers to produce distinctive literary responses to the classical tradition. Women readers focused on image, plot, and character rather than grammar, leading to imaginative and often subversive reworkings of classical texts. Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot have been granted an exceptional status as 19th-century female classicists. This book places them in a literary tradition in which revising classical narratives in forms such as the novel and the dramatic monologue offered women the opportunity to express controversial ideas. The reworking of classical texts serves a variety of purposes: to validate women's claims to authorship, to demand access to education, to highlight feminist issues through the heroines of ancient tragedy, and to repudiate the warrior ethos of ancient epic.

W. S. Barrett (1914-2001) was one of the finest Hellenists of the second half of the 20th century, known above all for his celebrated edition of Euripides' Hippolytus. This volume of his collected ...
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W. S. Barrett (1914-2001) was one of the finest Hellenists of the second half of the 20th century, known above all for his celebrated edition of Euripides' Hippolytus. This volume of his collected scholarly papers includes five articles published between 1954 and 1978, together with a much larger number of others that remained unpublished in his lifetime and are presented here for the first time. They deal mainly with Greek lyric poetry (Stesichoros, Pindar, Bacchylides) and Tragedy.Less

Greek Lyric, Tragedy, and Textual Criticism : Collected Papers

W. S. Barrett

Published in print: 2007-05-01

W. S. Barrett (1914-2001) was one of the finest Hellenists of the second half of the 20th century, known above all for his celebrated edition of Euripides' Hippolytus. This volume of his collected scholarly papers includes five articles published between 1954 and 1978, together with a much larger number of others that remained unpublished in his lifetime and are presented here for the first time. They deal mainly with Greek lyric poetry (Stesichoros, Pindar, Bacchylides) and Tragedy.

As both a literary genre and a view of life, tragedy has from the very beginning spurred a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Plato wanted to ban tragedians from his ideal community because he ...
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As both a literary genre and a view of life, tragedy has from the very beginning spurred a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Plato wanted to ban tragedians from his ideal community because he believed that they dabbled in the philosopher’s business but had no “idea” what they were doing. Aristotle set out to answer Plato’s objections by arguing that fiction offers a faithful image of the truth and promotes emotional health through the mechanism of catharsis. This book argues that Aristotle’s definition of tragedy actually had its greatest impact not on Greek tragedy itself but on the later history of the idea of tragedy, beginning with the tragedies of the Roman poet and Stoic philosopher Seneca (4 bc–ad 65), whose Latin plays were known and read in the Renaissance for centuries before the now more famous Greek tragedies were rediscovered. When Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) composed An Apology for Poetry, he borrowed from Seneca the word idea to designate what we would now label as a “theory” of tragedy. Through Sidney, Seneca’s plays came to exemplify an idea of tragedy that was at its core Aristotelian. Senecan tragedy enacts Aristotle’s conception of the genre as a vivid image of the truth and treats tragedy as a natural venue in which to explore the human soul.Less

Seneca and the Idea of Tragedy

Gregory A. Staley

Published in print: 2009-11-13

As both a literary genre and a view of life, tragedy has from the very beginning spurred a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Plato wanted to ban tragedians from his ideal community because he believed that they dabbled in the philosopher’s business but had no “idea” what they were doing. Aristotle set out to answer Plato’s objections by arguing that fiction offers a faithful image of the truth and promotes emotional health through the mechanism of catharsis. This book argues that Aristotle’s definition of tragedy actually had its greatest impact not on Greek tragedy itself but on the later history of the idea of tragedy, beginning with the tragedies of the Roman poet and Stoic philosopher Seneca (4 bc–ad 65), whose Latin plays were known and read in the Renaissance for centuries before the now more famous Greek tragedies were rediscovered. When Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) composed An Apology for Poetry, he borrowed from Seneca the word idea to designate what we would now label as a “theory” of tragedy. Through Sidney, Seneca’s plays came to exemplify an idea of tragedy that was at its core Aristotelian. Senecan tragedy enacts Aristotle’s conception of the genre as a vivid image of the truth and treats tragedy as a natural venue in which to explore the human soul.

Why does tragedy give pleasure? Why do people who are neither wicked nor depraved enjoy watching plays about suffering or death? Is it because we see horrific matter controlled by majestic art? Or ...
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Why does tragedy give pleasure? Why do people who are neither wicked nor depraved enjoy watching plays about suffering or death? Is it because we see horrific matter controlled by majestic art? Or because tragedy actually reaches out to the dark side of human nature? This wide-ranging, lively and engaging book offers a new answer to this perennial question. The ‘classical’ answer to the question is rooted in Aristotle and rests on the unreality of the tragic presentation: no one really dies; we are free to enjoy watching potentially horrible events controlled and disposed in majestic sequence by art. In the nineteenth century, Nietzsche dared to suggest that Greek tragedy is involved with darkness and unreason and Freud asserted that we are all, at the unconscious level, quite wicked enough to rejoice in death. But the problem persists: how can the conscious mind assent to such enjoyment? Strenuous bodily exercise is pleasurable. Could we, when we respond to a tragedy, be exercising our emotions, preparing for real grief and fear? King Lear actually destroys an expected majestic sequence. Might the pleasure of tragedy have more to do with possible truth than with ‘splendid evasion’?Less

Why Does Tragedy Give Pleasure?

A. D. Nuttall

Published in print: 2001-03-29

Why does tragedy give pleasure? Why do people who are neither wicked nor depraved enjoy watching plays about suffering or death? Is it because we see horrific matter controlled by majestic art? Or because tragedy actually reaches out to the dark side of human nature? This wide-ranging, lively and engaging book offers a new answer to this perennial question. The ‘classical’ answer to the question is rooted in Aristotle and rests on the unreality of the tragic presentation: no one really dies; we are free to enjoy watching potentially horrible events controlled and disposed in majestic sequence by art. In the nineteenth century, Nietzsche dared to suggest that Greek tragedy is involved with darkness and unreason and Freud asserted that we are all, at the unconscious level, quite wicked enough to rejoice in death. But the problem persists: how can the conscious mind assent to such enjoyment? Strenuous bodily exercise is pleasurable. Could we, when we respond to a tragedy, be exercising our emotions, preparing for real grief and fear? King Lear actually destroys an expected majestic sequence. Might the pleasure of tragedy have more to do with possible truth than with ‘splendid evasion’?

France's greatest tragedian, Jean Racine, is often admired for his poetic and tragic qualities. This book explores the theatrical qualities of Racine's language and takes as its analytical tool two ...
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France's greatest tragedian, Jean Racine, is often admired for his poetic and tragic qualities. This book explores the theatrical qualities of Racine's language and takes as its analytical tool two neglected parts of rhetoric, inventio and dispositio. How does Racine write exciting dialogue? He makes the persuasive interaction of characters a key feature of his dramatic technique and this book shows how he deploys persuasion in well-defined contexts: trials, embassies, and councils; informal oratory as protagonists try to manipulate each other and their confidants in order to make their own views and wishes prevail; self-persuasion in monologues; and narrations, often used by characters with persuasive intent. The book draws illuminating and provocative comparisons with other playwrights and offers a closer and better documented description of the specific nature of Racine's theatrical language than has previously been available in any one study.Less

Word as Action : Racine, Rhetoric, and Theatrical Language

Michael Hawcroft

Published in print: 1992-04-16

France's greatest tragedian, Jean Racine, is often admired for his poetic and tragic qualities. This book explores the theatrical qualities of Racine's language and takes as its analytical tool two neglected parts of rhetoric, inventio and dispositio. How does Racine write exciting dialogue? He makes the persuasive interaction of characters a key feature of his dramatic technique and this book shows how he deploys persuasion in well-defined contexts: trials, embassies, and councils; informal oratory as protagonists try to manipulate each other and their confidants in order to make their own views and wishes prevail; self-persuasion in monologues; and narrations, often used by characters with persuasive intent. The book draws illuminating and provocative comparisons with other playwrights and offers a closer and better documented description of the specific nature of Racine's theatrical language than has previously been available in any one study.

This book charts the influence of Seneca — both as specific text and inherited tradition — through an analysis of Shakespeare's tragedies. Discerning patterns in previously attested borrowings and ...
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This book charts the influence of Seneca — both as specific text and inherited tradition — through an analysis of Shakespeare's tragedies. Discerning patterns in previously attested borrowings and discovering new indebtedness, it presents an integrated and comprehensive assessment. Familiar methods of source study and an understanding of intertextuality are employed to re-evaluate the much maligned Seneca in the light of his Greek antecedents, Renaissance translations and commentaries, and dramatic adaptations, especially those of Chapman, Jonson, Marston, Garnier, Cinthio, and Dolce. Three broad categories organize the discussion — Senecan revenge, tyranny, and furore — and each is illustrated by an earlier and later Shakespearean tragedy. The author keeps in view Shakespeare's eclecticism, his habit of combining disparate sources and conventions, as well as the rich history of literary criticism and theatrical interpretation. The book concludes by discussing Seneca's presence in Renaissance comedy and, more important, in the hybrid genre, tragicomedy.Less

Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy : The Influence of Seneca

Robert S. Miola

Published in print: 1992-06-18

This book charts the influence of Seneca — both as specific text and inherited tradition — through an analysis of Shakespeare's tragedies. Discerning patterns in previously attested borrowings and discovering new indebtedness, it presents an integrated and comprehensive assessment. Familiar methods of source study and an understanding of intertextuality are employed to re-evaluate the much maligned Seneca in the light of his Greek antecedents, Renaissance translations and commentaries, and dramatic adaptations, especially those of Chapman, Jonson, Marston, Garnier, Cinthio, and Dolce. Three broad categories organize the discussion — Senecan revenge, tyranny, and furore — and each is illustrated by an earlier and later Shakespearean tragedy. The author keeps in view Shakespeare's eclecticism, his habit of combining disparate sources and conventions, as well as the rich history of literary criticism and theatrical interpretation. The book concludes by discussing Seneca's presence in Renaissance comedy and, more important, in the hybrid genre, tragicomedy.

This book reads tragedy as a genre in which the protagonist is estranged from the world around him, and, displaced in time, space, and language, comes to inhabit a milieu which is no longer shared by ...
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This book reads tragedy as a genre in which the protagonist is estranged from the world around him, and, displaced in time, space, and language, comes to inhabit a milieu which is no longer shared by other characters. This alienation from others also entails a decomposition of the integrity of the individual, which is often seen in tragedy's uncertainty about the protagonists' autonomy: do they act, or do the gods act through them? Where are the boundaries of the self, and the boundaries of the human? After an introductory essay exploring the theatrical and linguistic means by which the protagonist is made to inhabit a strange and singular world, the book devotes essays to plays from classical, renaissance, and neo-classical literature by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Seneca, William Shakespeare, and Jean Racine. Close attention is paid to the linguistic strangeness of the texts which is often smoothed over by editors and translators, as it is through the weirdness of tragic language that the deep estrangement of the characters is shown. Accordingly, the Greek, Latin, and French texts are quoted in the originals, with translations added, and attention is paid to textual cruces which illustrate the linguistic and conceptual difficulties of these plays.Less

The Strangeness of Tragedy

Paul Hammond

Published in print: 2009-09-17

This book reads tragedy as a genre in which the protagonist is estranged from the world around him, and, displaced in time, space, and language, comes to inhabit a milieu which is no longer shared by other characters. This alienation from others also entails a decomposition of the integrity of the individual, which is often seen in tragedy's uncertainty about the protagonists' autonomy: do they act, or do the gods act through them? Where are the boundaries of the self, and the boundaries of the human? After an introductory essay exploring the theatrical and linguistic means by which the protagonist is made to inhabit a strange and singular world, the book devotes essays to plays from classical, renaissance, and neo-classical literature by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Seneca, William Shakespeare, and Jean Racine. Close attention is paid to the linguistic strangeness of the texts which is often smoothed over by editors and translators, as it is through the weirdness of tragic language that the deep estrangement of the characters is shown. Accordingly, the Greek, Latin, and French texts are quoted in the originals, with translations added, and attention is paid to textual cruces which illustrate the linguistic and conceptual difficulties of these plays.

This book gives a new interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy and examines in detail his debt to Kant, in particular the Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of ...
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This book gives a new interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy and examines in detail his debt to Kant, in particular the Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgement. Nietzsche, it argues, knew Kant far better than is commonly thought, and can only be thoroughly understood in relation to Kant. Nietzsche's Critiques maintains that beneath the surface of his texts there is a systematic commitment to a form of early Neo-Kantianism in metaphysics and epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, grounded in his reading of the three Critiques, Kuno Fischer's commentary on the first Critique, and Friedrich Lange's discussion of Kant in The History of Materialism. The book also documents the decisive influence Nietzsche's close reading of the Critique of Judgement had on the writing of the Birth of Tragedy, and offers a remarkably accessible interpretation of Kant's system, while clarifying such difficult issues as the interpretation of Kant's ‘Transcendental Deduction’ and his notion of reflective judgement.Less

Nietzsche's Critiques

R. Kevin Hill

Published in print: 2005-07-07

This book gives a new interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy and examines in detail his debt to Kant, in particular the Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgement. Nietzsche, it argues, knew Kant far better than is commonly thought, and can only be thoroughly understood in relation to Kant. Nietzsche's Critiques maintains that beneath the surface of his texts there is a systematic commitment to a form of early Neo-Kantianism in metaphysics and epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, grounded in his reading of the three Critiques, Kuno Fischer's commentary on the first Critique, and Friedrich Lange's discussion of Kant in The History of Materialism. The book also documents the decisive influence Nietzsche's close reading of the Critique of Judgement had on the writing of the Birth of Tragedy, and offers a remarkably accessible interpretation of Kant's system, while clarifying such difficult issues as the interpretation of Kant's ‘Transcendental Deduction’ and his notion of reflective judgement.

A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan und Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's ...
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A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan und Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's arms. While critics have lauded Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for the originality and subtlety of the music, they have denounced the drama as a “mere trifle”—a rendering of Wagner's forbidden love for Matilde Wesendonck, the wife of a banker who supported him during his exile in Switzerland. The book explodes this established interpretation, proving the drama to be more than just a sublimation of the composer's love for Wesendonck or a wistful romantic dream. It attests that Tristan and Isolde has profound religious meaning and remains as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries, offering also a keen insight into the nature of erotic love, the sacred qualities of human passion, and the peculiar place of the erotic in our culture. It is an argument which touches on the nature of tragedy, the significance of ritual sacrifice, and the meaning of redemption, providing a fresh interpretation of Wagner's masterpiece. This account of Wagner's music drama blends philosophy, criticism, and musicology in order to show the work's importance in the 21st century.Less

Death-Devoted Heart : Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde

Roger Scruton

Published in print: 2004-01-22

A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan und Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's arms. While critics have lauded Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for the originality and subtlety of the music, they have denounced the drama as a “mere trifle”—a rendering of Wagner's forbidden love for Matilde Wesendonck, the wife of a banker who supported him during his exile in Switzerland. The book explodes this established interpretation, proving the drama to be more than just a sublimation of the composer's love for Wesendonck or a wistful romantic dream. It attests that Tristan and Isolde has profound religious meaning and remains as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries, offering also a keen insight into the nature of erotic love, the sacred qualities of human passion, and the peculiar place of the erotic in our culture. It is an argument which touches on the nature of tragedy, the significance of ritual sacrifice, and the meaning of redemption, providing a fresh interpretation of Wagner's masterpiece. This account of Wagner's music drama blends philosophy, criticism, and musicology in order to show the work's importance in the 21st century.

For most of my life, I have been dismissive of both spirituality and religion. I say this to make clear the perspective and the starting point of this book, this search. No doubt, many of my readers ...
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For most of my life, I have been dismissive of both spirituality and religion. I say this to make clear the perspective and the starting point of this book, this search. No doubt, many of my readers will think of me as simpleminded, trying to recover what I should have learned had I been rightly raised in the matrix of religion, ritual, and belief. Others, my friends from the field of science and most of my political friends, will think that I am benighted, or perhaps something of a sell out, for giving up my lifelong down‐to‐earth scientific, and admittedly hyperrational way of thinking about things. But if the very idea of spirituality seemed to me to be contaminated by sectarian religion and by uncritical and antiscientific thinking, my view of life, which manifested in my becoming a philosopher (it did not come from philosophy) pointed to something else. Spirituality is not just organized religion. Nor is it antiscience, unnatural or supernatural. There is a naturalized spirituality that I have always had a glimpse of, and this is what I want to pursue in this book.Less

Spirituality for the Skeptic : The Thoughtful Love of life

Robert C. Solomon

Published in print: 2002-04-18

For most of my life, I have been dismissive of both spirituality and religion. I say this to make clear the perspective and the starting point of this book, this search. No doubt, many of my readers will think of me as simpleminded, trying to recover what I should have learned had I been rightly raised in the matrix of religion, ritual, and belief. Others, my friends from the field of science and most of my political friends, will think that I am benighted, or perhaps something of a sell out, for giving up my lifelong down‐to‐earth scientific, and admittedly hyperrational way of thinking about things. But if the very idea of spirituality seemed to me to be contaminated by sectarian religion and by uncritical and antiscientific thinking, my view of life, which manifested in my becoming a philosopher (it did not come from philosophy) pointed to something else. Spirituality is not just organized religion. Nor is it antiscience, unnatural or supernatural. There is a naturalized spirituality that I have always had a glimpse of, and this is what I want to pursue in this book.

In the tragedies discussed in this book, the characters eventually move into the singularity of their own death, which has been prepared long before. From Agamemnon to Clytemnestra to Oedipus and ...
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In the tragedies discussed in this book, the characters eventually move into the singularity of their own death, which has been prepared long before. From Agamemnon to Clytemnestra to Oedipus and Macbeth, death occupies a pre-existing off-stage space into which they are summoned: a form of Heimat. These are all instances of der eigne Tod: completed tragedy. The journey which the tragic protagonist makes is one which takes him out of the shared Heimat, the common home with its agreed structures of thought, into a form of the unheimlich where the usual relations of time and space, signifier and signified, are deformed into strange shapes. In this dimension the individual may appear strong, may seem to have a Hegelian stature and solidity, but the work of tragedy is to estrange such a selfhood from the world around it and from itself. The foreign through which the tragic figure moves is a foreign which relates to the return home.Less

Epilogue

Paul Hammond

Published in print: 2009-09-17

In the tragedies discussed in this book, the characters eventually move into the singularity of their own death, which has been prepared long before. From Agamemnon to Clytemnestra to Oedipus and Macbeth, death occupies a pre-existing off-stage space into which they are summoned: a form of Heimat. These are all instances of der eigne Tod: completed tragedy. The journey which the tragic protagonist makes is one which takes him out of the shared Heimat, the common home with its agreed structures of thought, into a form of the unheimlich where the usual relations of time and space, signifier and signified, are deformed into strange shapes. In this dimension the individual may appear strong, may seem to have a Hegelian stature and solidity, but the work of tragedy is to estrange such a selfhood from the world around it and from itself. The foreign through which the tragic figure moves is a foreign which relates to the return home.

Thomas Aquinas first gave an empirical or inferential argument for the existence of a transcendent God and then dealt with the problem of evil empirically. But if one considers God's existence on a ...
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Thomas Aquinas first gave an empirical or inferential argument for the existence of a transcendent God and then dealt with the problem of evil empirically. But if one considers God's existence on a logical or deductive level, the problem of evil will come in pursuit on a logical level, or as the logical concomitant of ‘good’. Because it cannot draw on knowledge of the transcendent reality of God's goodness, modern thought tends to picture good and evil as set in melodramatic confrontation. The ‘Unknowable God’ is easily conflated with his opposite number, Satan. Jenson's narrative theology falls into the trap of melodrama by making evil a necessary feature of reality, existing because of Christ, and grammatical Thomism does so by evading the problem of evil via its agnosticism about our knowledge of God and his goodness. Given that God is not as unknown in Thomas' own theology as in grammatical Thomism, the best way forward is to use our knowledge of God's goodness first to appreciate the value of created reality as such, and second to restate Augustine's merely factual or empirical explanation of evil via the Fall. One may then say that what Job experiences is the love of God.Less

From Theodicy to Melodrama

Francesca Aran Murphy

Published in print: 2007-07-01

Thomas Aquinas first gave an empirical or inferential argument for the existence of a transcendent God and then dealt with the problem of evil empirically. But if one considers God's existence on a logical or deductive level, the problem of evil will come in pursuit on a logical level, or as the logical concomitant of ‘good’. Because it cannot draw on knowledge of the transcendent reality of God's goodness, modern thought tends to picture good and evil as set in melodramatic confrontation. The ‘Unknowable God’ is easily conflated with his opposite number, Satan. Jenson's narrative theology falls into the trap of melodrama by making evil a necessary feature of reality, existing because of Christ, and grammatical Thomism does so by evading the problem of evil via its agnosticism about our knowledge of God and his goodness. Given that God is not as unknown in Thomas' own theology as in grammatical Thomism, the best way forward is to use our knowledge of God's goodness first to appreciate the value of created reality as such, and second to restate Augustine's merely factual or empirical explanation of evil via the Fall. One may then say that what Job experiences is the love of God.

This essay surveys the range of philosophical problems that can be encompassed under the rubric, emotion in response to art. It details five such problems, according most of its attention to the ...
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This essay surveys the range of philosophical problems that can be encompassed under the rubric, emotion in response to art. It details five such problems, according most of its attention to the nature of the emotional responses had to art, and the puzzle of emotional responses to fictional entities known to be fictional (what is often labeled ‘the paradox of fiction’). Attention is also given to the puzzle of how people derive satisfaction from art expressive or evocative of negative emotion (what is often labeled ‘the paradox of tragedy’), and to the question of how abstract works of art (such as pieces of instrumental music) manage to express or evoke emotions at all.Less

Emotion in Response to Art

Jerrold Levinson

Published in print: 2006-10-05

This essay surveys the range of philosophical problems that can be encompassed under the rubric, emotion in response to art. It details five such problems, according most of its attention to the nature of the emotional responses had to art, and the puzzle of emotional responses to fictional entities known to be fictional (what is often labeled ‘the paradox of fiction’). Attention is also given to the puzzle of how people derive satisfaction from art expressive or evocative of negative emotion (what is often labeled ‘the paradox of tragedy’), and to the question of how abstract works of art (such as pieces of instrumental music) manage to express or evoke emotions at all.

In a theatre that self-consciously cultivated its audiences' imagination, how and what did playgoers ‘see’ on the stage? This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process, considering a ...
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In a theatre that self-consciously cultivated its audiences' imagination, how and what did playgoers ‘see’ on the stage? This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process, considering a range of printed and documentary evidence for the way ordinary individuals thought about their houses and households. It then explores how writers of domestic tragedies engaged those attitudes to shape their representations of domesticity. The book therefore offers a way of understanding theatrical representations based around a truly interdisciplinary study of the interaction between literary and historical methods. The opening chapters use household manuals, court depositions, wills and inventories to reconstruct the morality of household space and its affective meanings, and to explore ways of imaging these spaces. Further chapters discuss Arden of Faversham, Two Lamentable Tragedies, A Woman Killed With Kindness and A Yorkshire Tragedy, considering how the dynamics of the early modern house were represented on the stage. They identify a grammar of domestic representation stretching from subtle identifications of location to stage properties and the use of stage space. Investigating the connections between the seen and the unseen, between secret and revelation, between inside and outside, household and community, these plays are shown to offer a uniquely developed domestic mimesis.Less

Domestic Life and Domestic Tragedy in Early Modern England : The Material Life of the Household

Catherine Richardson

Published in print: 2006-10-30

In a theatre that self-consciously cultivated its audiences' imagination, how and what did playgoers ‘see’ on the stage? This book reconstructs one aspect of that imaginative process, considering a range of printed and documentary evidence for the way ordinary individuals thought about their houses and households. It then explores how writers of domestic tragedies engaged those attitudes to shape their representations of domesticity. The book therefore offers a way of understanding theatrical representations based around a truly interdisciplinary study of the interaction between literary and historical methods. The opening chapters use household manuals, court depositions, wills and inventories to reconstruct the morality of household space and its affective meanings, and to explore ways of imaging these spaces. Further chapters discuss Arden of Faversham, Two Lamentable Tragedies, A Woman Killed With Kindness and A Yorkshire Tragedy, considering how the dynamics of the early modern house were represented on the stage. They identify a grammar of domestic representation stretching from subtle identifications of location to stage properties and the use of stage space. Investigating the connections between the seen and the unseen, between secret and revelation, between inside and outside, household and community, these plays are shown to offer a uniquely developed domestic mimesis.